On This Day in History: May 2

Osama bin Laden is killed

AUDIO VERSION HERE

A piece of shit terrorist was killed by U.S. troops on this day, and did that fucker ever have it coming. Yet this isn’t so much about the hunting and killing of Osama bin Laden, but the role that torture did not play in ultimately tracking him down.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: May 2, 2011--

Speaking of pieces of shit, can we all agree that Dick Cheney is a piece of shit? Yes? Good. Because he totally is.

George W. Bush was not a strong-willed president, and many of the War on Terror policies his administration enacted were put in place due to the machinations of the (aforementioned piece of shit) vice president. One such policy was “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which is a euphemism for good old-fashioned torturing the fuck out of your enemies, but you don’t call it torture because you want to pretend that you’re better than your foes.

Anyway, yeah, the U.S. tortured people. A lot. And the resulting intelligence gathered through this fucked-up effort amounted to the square root of fuck all. Not according to that Zero Dark Thirty movie, though. That movie made it seem torture was totes legit and a big reason Osama was located, so a Navy SEAL could bust a cap in his terrorist ass. FYI, even Republican senator John McCain, who was tortured as a POW of North Vietnam, criticized the film, saying it made him feel sick.

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In reality, the torture program was more likely to generate false or misleading information, and numerous insiders confirmed it played no role whatsoever in the locating of bin Laden’s compound.

After bin Laden’s death, a bipartisan intelligence committee completed a 6,700-page “torture report” on the enhanced interrogation program. Its findings asserted the program was not effective in gaining either intelligence or cooperation from detainees, the claims made by the CIA about its effectiveness were bullshit, and the techniques used by the CIA were way worse than what they’d said they were. Plus a bunch of other stuff revealing it to be a total shitshow. Again, the report was 6,700 PAGES.

One thing the program did accomplish was to inspire a lot more terrorists. Funny how that works. 

Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.